The RSC is fond of Christopher Marlowe. When they didThe Jew of Malta in 2015, stagehands had RMC- Royal Marlowe Company – T-shirts. Last year they did Dr Faustus, also starring Sandy Grierson. This year they’re on to Marlowe’s first play, Dido Queen of Carthage.

The consensus (at least for the Telegraph and Guardian, but they are the best sources) is that The Swan’s Marlowe is better than the RST (Royal Shakespeare Theatre)’s Shakespeare running alongside it. The Swan’s programme has had an extremely good year in comparison, because the RST has thrown all its eggs in the Roman basket.

It’s claimed that Marlowe may have written this play at Cambridge University. The first printed edition in 1594, a year after Marlowe’s death, assigns its stage production to The Children of Her Majesty’s Chapel. The classical theme, drawn so closely from The Aenid, points to student productions of the era, which were inclined to stay close to Greek and Latin originals. These “children,” or rather boy players, were law students, and probably had little interesting to read except The Illiad, The Odyssey and The Aenid. This is significant. See later.

Aeneas has fled Troy, and finds himself an immigrant thrown up on the coast of Tunisia, the domain of Queen Dido. It would be a sadly ironic reversal if it had been present day Libya, as some reviews say, but the often mentioned ‘Libya’ in the text was the Latin name for all of Africa. Dido, has been afflicted with love for Aeneas by Cupid’s arrow, and throws off her suitor, Iarbas, King of Gaetulia (the Berber tribes of Africa). Aeneas has to continue his quest to found a new Troy in Italy, which will become Rome, and leaves. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

The gods are part of it all, manipulating the affairs of humans. We have Jupiter, his wife Juno, Venus, Hermes and Cupid. Venus is the mother of Aeneas, making him half a god, as well as the mother of Cupid, who is all-god I assume. Juno is consumed with jealousy at Jupiter’s attention to the male youth Ganymede.

Dido (Chipo Chung) with Aeneas’ son, Ascanius

It is a template for Antony & Cleopatra, and the two queens, Dido and Cleopatra, are pretty much interchangeable. You lose the Roman plotting which is a blessed relief given the surfeit of Rome in 2017 Stratford. You gain a good romantic subplot. Anna, the Queen’s sister, is in love with the rejected King Iarbas, and is a strong character, replacing Cleopatra’s gentlewomen. Amber James plays Anna, and played Charmiane in Antony & Cleopatra at the RSC this season, so she’s in an uncannily similar role.

It looks glorious throughout. The production is a triumph of set design and costume design (Ti Green). The lighting by Ciaran Bagnall is so good that as an ex-lighting person myself I’d love to see it again just to focus on the lighting plot. The set is a brick wall and sand. After a few WTF sandpits on stages in recent years, at last we have one that makes sense and works. The sand proves useful, as it can be thrown in the air by the gods to initiate spells or bring on storms. A feature is a narrow wall of water (waterfall or rain) lit by LEDs which can form a backdrop or a rainstorm when it’s switched on. Aeneas is first glimpsed through a wall of water, hanging upside down from ship’s ropesIn the second part, the boat sails become curtains, then shrouds in quick order.

Nicholas Day as Jupiter

After a dreary King Lear last week, and a dull modern dress Coriolanus the night before, at last we have a production that is aware that costume can look good (for a change). The gods are in modern dress. Jupiter is in an immaculate white suit to match his white hair snowy locks (Marlowe’s language must be getting to me). Venus is in scarlet. Juno in sequins. When we first see The Trojans emerge from the shipwreck they’re in filthy tattered generic historical sailor garb.

Aeneas (Sandy Grierson), shipwrecked on the shores of Africa

On arrival in Carthage, they’re met by Iarbus, in mustard Berber wrapped cloths. The arrivals are given colourful North African cloaks and shirts. Dido is in glorious copper dress with gold jewellery, later in white with gold printing.

Daniel York as Iarbus, the Berber king

Mike Fletcher’s music is another triumph. It starts as a pre-show, almost a free jazz cacophony around a wild trumpet. Then we have Middle Eastern themes and percussion, more modern classical / jazz accenting. At the start, Jupiter conduicts starts and stops with flashes of thunderbolts, one bit of heavy metal lead guitar is a shock in there.

It’s staged and blocked at the highest level; throughout, and reviewers are right to nominate Kimberley Sykes as a major find for the RSC, and I have the feeling we’ll see a lot more of her.

The actors are led by Sandy Grierson as Aeneas. I saw him twice in Dr Faustus last year. Chipo Chung has the role of Dido, and she has the exotic looks for the part. Amber James is Anna (the second time this year I thought she deserves “best support actress.”) I’m still trying to puzzle how her luxurious curly hair was ripped to reveal a bleeding scalp at the end. Daniel York is Iarbus.

Dido (Chipo Chung) and Anna (Amber James)

The gods are led powerfully by Nicholas Day (we were left wanting to see more of him). Ellie Bevan was Venus, goddess of love, a perfect role to follow her Volupta in Vice Versa this year. Bridgitta Roy was Juno. Ben Goffe was a very funny choice for Cupid, as Cupid has to pretend he is Aeneas’s son Ascanius, making use of his stature. Cupid doesn’t get arrows but a hypodermic syringe and draws his love potion from Venus’ veins. Andro Cowperthwaite was Hermes, messenger of the gods, understudying seamlessly for Will Bliss.

Cupid (Ben Goffe) and Venus (Ellie Bevan)

The great centrepieces of the play are Aeneas’s account of the fall of Troy, and the final death of Queen Dido. These are the scenes which would make a producer choose to do the play.

The account of the fall of Troy is full of harrowing description:

AENEAS: Frighted with this confused noise, I rose,And looking from a turret, might beholdYoung infants swimming in their parents’ blood !Headless carcases piled up in heaps !Virgins, half dead, dragg’d by their golden hair,And with main force flung on a ring of pikes !Old men with swords thrust through their aged sides,Kneeling for mercy to a Greekish lad,Who, with steel pole-axes, dash’d out their brains.

The whole cast have assembled in a circle to hear Aeneas’s tale, a splendid performance by Grierson. (I wish there was a wide shot of this online … the photos are mainly close ups). The issue I have is that these “boy players” of the 1590s would have known every proper noun in there. They knew who the Myrmidons were (the semi-robotic, ant-descended shock troops of Achilles). For the less specialist modern listener the list of quoted names is hard-going: Sinon,Ulyesses, Hermes, Priamus, Epeus, Minerva, Neotolemus, Achilles, Pyrrhus, Megara, Venus, Hecuba, Creusa, Achates, Cassandra, Ajax, Diana, Polyxena, Helen, Deiphobus, Alexander … plus places: Tenedos, Zanthus’s banks, Illion, Phyrgians. It won’t spoil it. In the end, I let the language wash over me and enjoyed the bits I did understand.

There is also an awareness that Shakespeare was lampooning Marlowe’s high-flung words (pale death’s stony mace indeed) and love of alliteration in the Players scene from Hamlet and even more in Pyramus and Thisbe from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Dido kills herself after Aeneas is persuaded to leave for Italy. It’s a great scene. We wondered as she poured liquid on herself if were going to see a fire on stage … she performs brilliantly, ending as an ashy frozen figure.

Dido and Aeneas … he is about to leave

Grierson as Aeneas, grieving for his wife, never falls totally for Dido. That is the tragedy. He holds back throughout. There was a line we wondered about:

It’s when he’s trying to leave. Given the ethnicity of Chipo Chung (half Zimbabwean, half Chinese) it’s odd to have kept it. I looked at the text. It’s his only line interrupting a long Dido monologue, and he really does need to say something. I guess it was discussed.

Dido discovers Aeneas is about to leave

Overall rating? So much of it is five star … set, costume, lights, stage direction, acting … that I’m sorely tempted to five. In the end though, it is early Marlowe, and the amount of monologue declaiming as well as the number of classical references mean it’s not in the first rank of Elizabethan plays … well, not quite. But see Michael Billington’s quote below. In the September 2017 comparison with Coriolanus playing next door, Dido is the clear winner.

Four stars ****

WHAT THE PAPERS SAIDI’m fascinated by the fact that Anne Treneman of The Times gives EVERYTHING two stars. It’s virtually invariable.
5
John Kennedy TheReviews Hub, *****
4
Domenic Cavendish, Daily Telegraph ****

(Kimberley Sykes) staging of what is thought to be Christopher Marlowe’s first play (c.1587-1593) is the finest thing I’ve seen at Stratford all year. It’s visually ravishing, beautifully spoken and thanks to her persistent inventiveness- there’s not a dull minute.

Michael Billington, The Guardian, ****

In any juxtaposition of Shakespeare and Marlowe, the former will always be the winner, but this production makes a strong case for the youthful classicist from Canterbury.